Ehrenburg Ilya Grigorievich analysis. Ehrenburg Ilya Grigorievich. Biography. How was the further life of Irina Ehrenburg

Russian writer, poet, publicist, journalist, translator, public figure, photographer

Ilya Erenburg

short biography

Ilya Grigorievich Ehrenburg(January 26, 1891, Kyiv - August 31, 1967, Moscow) - Russian writer, poet, publicist, journalist, translator from French and Spanish, public figure, photographer. In 1908-1917 and 1921-1940 he was in exile, since 1940 he lived in the USSR.

Ilya Ehrenburg was born in Kyiv into a wealthy Jewish family, in which he was the fourth child and only son. His father - Gersh Gershanovich (Gersh Germanovich, Grigory Grigorievich) Ehrenburg (1852-1921) - was an engineer and merchant of the second guild (later the first guild); mother - Khana Berkovna (Anna Borisovna) Ehrenburg (nee Arinstein, 1857-1918) - a housewife. He had older sisters Manya (Maria, 1881-1940), Evgenia (1883-1965) and Isabella (1886-1965). The parents got married in Kyiv on June 9, 1877, then lived in Kharkov, where three daughters were born, and returned to Kyiv only before the birth of their son. The family lived in the apartment of the grandfather from the father's side - a merchant of the second guild Grigory (Gershon) Ilyich Ehrenburg - in the house of Natalia Iskra at Institutskaya street No. . The family lived on Ostozhenka, in the house of the Varvarin Society in Savelovsky Lane, apartment 81.

Since 1901, together with N.I. Bukharin, he studied at the 1st Moscow Gymnasium, where he studied poorly from the third grade and was left for the second year in the fourth (he left the gymnasium as a fifth grade student in 1906).

Revolutions. Emigration. Returns

When will the war end?
Drawing by Marevna, 1916, Paris.
From left to right - Rivera, Modigliani, Ehrenburg

After the events of 1905, he took part in the work of the revolutionary organization of the Social Democrats, but did not join the RSDLP itself. In 1907 he was elected to the editorial board of the Social Democratic Union of Secondary Students. educational institutions Moscow. In January 1908, he was arrested, spent six months in prison and was released pending trial, but in December he emigrated to France, lived there for more than 8 years. Gradually withdrew from politics.

Worked in Paris literary activity, rotated in the circle of modernist artists. The first poem "I went to you" was published in the journal "Northern Dawns" on January 8, 1910; ), "Poems about eve" (1916), a book of translations by F. Villon (1913), several issues of the magazines "Helios" and "Evenings" (1914). In 1914-1917 he was a correspondent for the Russian newspapers "Morning of Russia" and "Birzhevye Vedomosti" on Western front.

In the summer of 1917 he returned to Russia. In the autumn of 1918, he moved to Kyiv, where he lodged with his cousin, a dermatovenereologist at the local Jewish hospital Alexander Grigorievich Lurie at 40 Vladimirskaya Street. In August 1919, he married Dr. Lurie's niece (his maternal cousin) Lyubov Kozintseva. From December 1919 to September 1920, together with his wife, he lived in Koktebel with Maximilian Voloshin, then from Feodosia he crossed by barge to Tiflis, where he obtained Soviet passports for himself, his wife and the Mandelstam brothers, with which in October 1920 they set off together as diplomatic couriers by train from Vladikavkaz to Moscow. At the end of October 1920, Ehrenburg was arrested by the Cheka and released thanks to the intervention of N.I. Bukharin.

Having negatively perceived the victory of the Bolsheviks (collection of poems Prayer for Russia, 1918; journalism in the newspaper Kyiv Zhizn), in March 1921 Ehrenburg again went abroad. Being expelled from France, he spent some time in Belgium and arrived in Berlin in November. In 1921-1924 he lived in Berlin, where he published about two dozen books, collaborated in the New Russian Book, and together with L. M. Lissitzky published the constructivist magazine Veshch. In 1922, he published the philosophical and satirical novel The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disciples, which gives an interesting mosaic picture of the life of Europe and Russia during the First World War and the Revolution, but most importantly, a set of amazingly accurate prophecies. Leonid Zhukhovitsky wrote about this:

... I am still shocked by the completely fulfilled prophecies from Julio Jurenito. Did you guess by chance? But was it possible to accidentally guess both German fascism, and its Italian variety, and even the atomic bomb used by the Americans against the Japanese. Probably, in the young Ehrenburg there was nothing from Nostradamus, Vanga or Messing. There was another - a powerful mind and a quick reaction, which made it possible to capture the main features of entire peoples and foresee their development in the future. In past centuries, for such a gift, they were burned at the stake or declared crazy, like Chaadaev.

I. G. Ehrenburg was a propagandist of avant-garde art (“And yet it spins”, 1922). In 1922, his last collection of poems, Devastating Love, was published. In 1923 he wrote a collection of short stories "Thirteen Pipes" and the novel "Trust D. E." Ehrenburg was close to the left circles of French society, actively collaborated with the Soviet press - since 1923 he worked as a correspondent for Izvestia. His name and talent as a publicist were widely used by Soviet propaganda to create an attractive image. Soviet Union Abroad. Traveled a lot in Europe (Germany - 1927, 1928, 1930, 1931; Turkey, Greece - 1926; Spain - 1926; Poland - 1928; Czechoslovakia - 1927, 1928, 1931, 1934; Sweden, Norway - 1929; Denmark - 1929, 1933 ; England - 1930; Switzerland - 1931; Romania, Yugoslavia, Italy - 1934). In the summer and autumn of 1932, he traveled around the USSR, was on the construction of the Moscow-Donbass highway, in Kuznetsk, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, which resulted in the novel Day Two (1934), condemned by critics; in 1934 he spoke at the First Congress of Soviet Writers. On July 16-18, 1934, in order to find Osip Mandelstam, who was in exile, he visited Voronezh.

Since 1931, the tone of his journalistic and works of art becomes more and more pro-Soviet, with faith in the "bright future of the new man." In 1933, the Izogiz publishing house published Ehrenburg's photo album My Paris in a carton and dust jacket made by El Lissitzky.

After Hitler came to power, he became the greatest master of anti-Nazi propaganda. During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, Ehrenburg was a war correspondent for Izvestia; acted as an essayist, prose writer (collection of short stories Outside the Truce, 1937; novel What a Man Needs, 1937), poet (collection of poems Loyalty, 1941). On December 24, 1937, he came from Spain to Moscow for two weeks, and on December 29 he spoke at a writers' congress in Tbilisi. On his next visit from Spain, his foreign passport was taken away from him, which was restored in April 1938 after two appeals from Ehrenburg to Stalin, and in early May he returned to Barcelona. After the defeat of the Republicans, he returned to Paris. After the German occupation of France, he took refuge in the Soviet embassy.

Military period of creativity

I have been told by people who are completely trustworthy that in one of the big partisan detachments there was the following paragraph of the handwritten order:
"Newspapers after reading to use at the heat, with the exception of articles by Ilya Ehrenburg."
This is truly the shortest and most joyful review for the writer's heart that I have ever heard of.
K. Simonov

Evg. Yevtushenko.
Khreshchatyk Parisian
I do not like Ehrenburg - stones,
even stone me.
He, smarter than all our marshals,
led us in the forty-fifth to victory.
The tank was named "Ilya Ehrenburg".
These letters shone on the armor.
The tank crossed the Dnieper or the Bug,
but Stalin watched him through binoculars.
They didn’t let me in, after reading the newspaper,
Ehrenburg on cigarettes,
and the blackest envy of the leader
slightly puffed out of the tube.
New news, 01/27/2006

In 1940 he returned to the USSR, where he wrote and published the novel The Fall of Paris (1941) about the political, moral and historical reasons for the defeat of France by Germany in World War II.

Then<22 июня 1941>They came for me and took me to Trud, to Krasnaya Zvezda, to the radio. I wrote the first military article. They called from PUR, they asked me to come in on Monday at eight o'clock in the morning, they asked: "Do you have a military rank?" I replied that there was no title, but there was a vocation: I would go where they were sent, I would do what they ordered.
- "People, years, life", book IV

During the years of the Great Patriotic War was a correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, wrote for other newspapers and for the Soviet Information Bureau. He became famous for his anti-German propaganda articles and works, which he wrote about 1500 during the war. A significant part of these articles, constantly published in the newspapers Pravda, Izvestia, Krasnaya Zvezda, are collected in the three-volume journalism War (1942-1944). In 1942, he joined the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and was active in collecting and publishing materials about the Holocaust, which, together with the writer Vasily Grossman, were collected in " black book».

Ilya Ehrenburg and Konstantin Simonov are the authors of the slogan "Kill the German!" (which was first heard in K. M. Simonov's poem "Kill him!"), which was widely used in posters and - as a headline - leaflets with quotes from Ehrenburg's article "Kill him!" (published 24 July 1942). To maintain the effectiveness of the slogan, special headings were created in Soviet newspapers of that time (one of the typical titles was “Did you kill a German today?”), In which letters were published by Soviet soldiers about the number of Germans they killed and how they were destroyed. Adolf Hitler personally ordered to catch and hang Ehrenburg, declaring him in January 1945 the worst enemy of Germany. Ehrenburg was nicknamed "Stalin's Home Jew" by Nazi propaganda.

The sermons of hatred by Ilya Ehrenburg, which have already borne their first fruits in the East, the Morgenthau plan, that is, the plan for the alleged territorial “castration” of Germany and the demand for unconditional surrender, stopped all attempts by the Germans to somehow agree and gave resistance a very sharp and fierce character, not only in Europe but all over the world. The vast majority of Germans saw no other way out for themselves than to fight. Even outright opponents of the Nazi regime now became desperate defenders of their homeland.
Walter Ludde-Neurath. End on German soil

In the days when the Red Army crossed state border Germany, in the Soviet leadership, actions in Germany were interpreted as the fulfillment of the liberation mission of the Red Army - the liberator of Europe and the German people themselves from Nazism. And therefore, after Ehrenburg’s article “Enough!”, Published in Krasnaya Zvezda on April 11, 1945, a response article appeared by the head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks G.F. .

Post-war creativity

Ehrenburg's grave at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow

After the war, he released a dilogy - the novels The Tempest (1946-1947) and The Ninth Wave (1950). One of the leaders of the Peace Movement.

In 1948, Hollywood releases the film The Iron Curtain, about the escape of the GRU cryptographer I. S. Guzenko and Soviet espionage. On February 21 of the same year, Ehrenburg published the article “Film Provocateurs” in the newspaper “Culture and Life”, written on the instructions of the Minister of Cinematography I. G. Bolshakov.

Ehrenburg's position among Soviet writers was peculiar: on the one hand, he received material benefits, often traveled abroad, on the other hand, he was under the control of special services and often even received reprimands. The attitude of the authorities towards Ehrenburg in the era of N. S. Khrushchev and L. I. Brezhnev was just as ambivalent.

After Stalin's death, he wrote the story "The Thaw" (1954), which was published in the May issue of the magazine "Znamya" and gave the name to the whole era. Soviet history. In 1958, "French Notebooks" came out - an essay on French literature, painting and translations from J. Du Bellay. He is the author of the memoirs People, Years, Life, which were very popular among the Soviet intelligentsia in the 1960s and 1970s. Ehrenburg introduced the younger generation to many “forgotten” names, contributed to the publication of both forgotten (M. I. Tsvetaeva, O. E. Mandelstam, I. E. Babel) and young authors (B. A. Slutsky, S. P. Gudzenko). He promoted the new Western art (P. Cezanne, O. Renoir, E. Manet, P. Picasso).

In March 1966, he signed a letter from thirteen figures of Soviet science, literature and art to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU against the rehabilitation of I.V. Stalin.

He died after a long illness from a massive myocardial infarction on August 31, 1967. About 15,000 people came to say goodbye to the writer.

He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery (site No. 7).

Compositions

The collected works of Ilya Ehrenburg in five volumes were published in 1951-1954 by the publishing house " Fiction».

The next collection, more complete, in nine volumes, was released by the same publishing house in 1962-1967.

In 1990-2000, the Khudozhestvennaya Literatura publishing house published the jubilee Collected Works in eight volumes.

Awards and prizes

Stalin Prize of the first degree (1942) - for the novel "The Fall of Paris" (1941)
Stalin Prize of the first degree (1948) - for the novel "The Tempest" (1947)
International Stalin Prize "For strengthening peace between peoples" (1952) - the first of only two laureates-Soviet citizens
two Orders of Lenin (April 30, 1944, 1961)
Order of the Red Banner of Labor
Order of the Red Star (1937)
Legion of Honor
medals

Membership in organizations

Vice-President of the SCM since 1950.
Member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR since 1950 from Daugavpils, Latvian USSR.

Family

First wife (1910-1913) - translator Katerina (Ekaterina) Ottovna Schmidt (1889-1977, in Sorokin's second marriage).
- Their daughter, the translator of French literature, Irina Ilyinichna Ehrenburg (1911-1997), was married to the writer Boris Matveyevich Lapin (1905-1941). After the tragic death of her husband, she adopted and raised a girl:

He brought the girl Fanya from the war, in front of whom the Germans shot her parents and sisters in Vinnitsa. The older brothers served in the Polish army. Some old man managed to hide Fanya, but since it was associated with great risk, he ordered her: "Run, look for the partisans." And Fanya ran.
Ehrenburg brought this girl to Moscow precisely in the hope of distracting Irina from her grief. And she adopted Fanya. At first, everything was quite difficult, because the girl did not speak Russian well. She spoke in some monstrous mixture of languages. But then she quickly mastered Russian and even became an excellent student.
Irina and Fanya lived in Lavrushinsky; the poet Stepan Shchipachev lived there with his son Viktor. Fanya met Victor back in the writer's pioneer camp; the semi-childish romance continued in Moscow and ended in marriage. Mom entered the philological faculty at Moscow State University, but quickly realized that it was not hers, and, having entered the medical school, she became a doctor. The marriage did not last long - three years. But I still managed to be born.

The second wife (since 1919) is the artist Lyubov Mikhailovna Kozintseva (1899-1970), the sister of film director Grigory Mikhailovich Kozintsev, a student of Alexandra Exter, Robert Falk, Alexander Rodchenko. I. G. Ehrenburg had a cousin-niece.
Cousin - artist and journalist, participant civil war Ilya Lazarevich Ehrenburg (1887-1920), son of Kharkov grain merchant Lazar Gershovich (Grigorievich) Ehrenburg, chemist, graduate Kharkiv University(1882); with a cousin and his wife Maria Mikhailovna, the Ehrenburgs were friendly during the period of the first emigration to Paris.
Cousin - collector, artist and teacher Natalya Lazarevna Ehrenburg (married Ehrenburg-Mannati, French Nathalie Ehrenbourg-Mannati; 1884-1979).
Cousins (by mother) - gynecologist Roza Grigorievna Lurie and dermatovenereologist Alexander Grigorievich Lurie (1868-1954), professor and head of the department of dermatovenereology Kyiv Institute improvements of doctors (1919-1949).
Cousin - Georgy Borisovich Ehrenburg (1902-1967), orientalist-sinologist.

famous phrase

I. Ehrenburg owns the famous words: “ See Paris and die».

Estimates of contemporaries

He was a good writer, talented. But he had some kind of reconciliation, or something, with Stalin's methods of management.
Nikita Khrushchev. Memories: Selected Fragments // Nikita Khrushchev; comp. A. Shevelenko. - M.: Vagrius, 2007. - 512 p.; ill.

Bibliography

Stalin - weekly newspaper of the 25th mixed international brigade. April 22, 1937. Editorial by Ehrenburg

1910 - Poems - Paris
1911 - I live - St. Petersburg: printing house of the partnership "Public benefit"
1912 - Dandelions - Paris
1913 - Weekdays: Poems - Paris
1914 - Children's - Paris: Rirakhovsky's printing house
1916 - The story of the life of a certain Nadenka and the prophetic signs revealed to her - Paris
1916 - Poems about eve - M .: printing house of A. A. Levenson
1917 - About Semyon Drozd's vest: Prayer - Paris
1918 - Prayer for Russia - 2nd ed. "In the hour of death"; Kyiv: "Chronicle"
1919 - Fire - Gomel: "Centuries and days"
1919 - In the stars - Kyiv; 2nd ed. Berlin: "Helikon", 1922
1920 - The face of war - Sofia: "Russian-Bulgarian publishing house", 1920; Berlin: "Helikon", 1923; M.: "Abyss", 1924; "ZiF", 1928
1921 - Eves - Berlin: "Thought"
1921 - Reflections - Riga; 2nd ed. Pg.: "Burning Bush"
1921 - Incredible stories - Berlin: "S. Efron"
1922 - Foreign thoughts - Pg .: "Bonfires"
1922 - About myself - Berlin: "New Russian Book"
1922 - Portraits of Russian poets. Berlin: "Argonauts"; M.: "Pervina", 1923; M.: "Science", 2002
1922 - Devastating Love - Berlin: "Lights"
1922 - Heart of Gold: Mystery; Wind: Tragedy - Berlin: "Helikon"
1922 - The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito - Berlin: "Helikon"; M.: "GIHL", 1923,1927
1922 - And yet it spins - Berlin: "Helikon"
1922 - Six stories about easy ends - Berlin: "Helikon"; M.: "Abyss", 1925
1922 - The life and death of Nikolai Kurbov - Berlin: "Helikon"; M.: "New Moscow", 1923
1923 - Thirteen pipes - Berlin: "Helikon"; M .: "New milestones", 1924; M.-L.: Novella, 1924
1923 - Animal warmth - Berlin: "Helikon"
1923 - Trust "D. E." The history of the death of Europe - Berlin: "Helikon"; Kharkiv: "Gosizdat"
1924 - Love of Jeanne Ney - M .: ed. magazine "Russia"; M.: Novella, 1925; M.: "ZiF", 1927; Riga, 1927
1924 - Pipe - M .: "Krasnaya Nov"
1925 - Jack of Diamonds and company - L.-M .: "Petrograd"
1925 - Rvach - Paris: "Knowledge"; Odessa: "Light", 1927
1926 - Summer 1925 - M .: "Circle"
1926 - Conditional suffering of a cafe frequenter - Odessa: "New Life"
1926 - Three stories about pipes - L .: "Surf"
1926 - Black crossing - M .: "Giz"
1926 - Stories - M .: "Pravda"
1927 - In Protochny Lane - Paris: "Helikon"; M .: "Earth and Factory"; Riga: "Gramatu draugs"
1927 - Materialization of fiction - M.-L .: "Cinema printing"
1927–1929 - Collected works in 10 volumes - "ZiF" (only 7 volumes were published: 1–4 and 6–8)
1928 - White Coal or Werther's Tears - L .: "Surf"
1928 - The turbulent life of Lasik Roytshvanets - Paris: "Helikon"; in Russia the novel was published in 1990
1928 - Stories - L .: "Surf"
1928 - Communard's pipe - Nizhny Novgorod
1928 - Conspiracy of equals - Berlin: "Petropolis"; Riga: Gramatu draugs, 1932
1929 - 10 HP Chronicle of Our Time - Berlin: "Petropolis"; M.-L.: GIHL, 1931
1930 - Time Visa - Berlin: "Petropolis"; 2nd add. ed., M.-L.: GIHL, 1931; 3rd ed., L., 1933
1931 - Dream Factory - Berlin: "Petropolis"
1931 - England - M .: "Federation"
1931 - United Front - Berlin: "Petropolis"
1931 - We and them (together with O. Savich) - France; Berlin: "Petropolis"
1932 - Spain - M .: "Federation"; 2nd add. ed. 1935; Berlin: "Helikon", 1933
1933 - Second day - M .: "Federation" and at the same time "Soviet literature"
1933 - Our daily bread - M .: "New milestones" and at the same time "Soviet literature"
1933 - My Paris - M .: "Izogiz"
1933 - Moscow does not believe in tears - Paris: "Helikon"; M.: "Soviet literature"
1934 - A protracted denouement - M .: "Soviet writer"
1934 - The Civil War in Austria - M .: "Soviet Literature"
1935 - Without taking a breath - Arkhangelsk: "Sevkrayizdat"; M.: "Soviet writer"; 5th ed., 1936
1935 - Chronicle of our days - M .: "Soviet writer"
1936 - Four pipes - M .: "Young Guard"
1936 - Borders of the night - M .: "Soviet writer"
1936 - Book for adults - M .: "Soviet writer"; M .: A / O "Book and business", 1992
1937 - Outside the truce - M .: "Goslitizdat"
1937 - What a person needs - M .: "Goslitizdat"
1938 - Spanish temper - M .: "Goslitizdat"
1941 - Fidelity: (Spain. Paris): Poems - M .: "Goslitizdat"
1941 - Captured Paris - M .: "Goslitizdat"
1941 - Gangsters - M .: "Goslitizdat"
1941 - Mad Wolves - M.-L .: "Voenmorizdat"
1941 - Cannibals. The path to Germany (in 2 books) - M .: "Voenizdat NPO"
1942 - The fall of Paris - M .: "Goslitizdat"; Magadan: "Soviet Kolyma"
1942 - Bitterness - M .: "Pravda"
1942 - Fire on the enemy - Tashkent: Goslitizdat
1942 - Caucasus - Yerevan: "Armgiz"
1942 - Hatred - M .: "Military Publishing House"
1942 - Solstice - M .: "Pravda"
1942 - bosses Nazi Germany: Adolf Hitler - Penza: ed. gas. "Stalin's Banner"
1942 - For life! - M.: "Soviet writer"
1942 - Basilisk - OGIHL, Kuibyshev; Moscow: Goslitizdat
1942–1944 - War (in 3 volumes) - M .: "GIHL"
1943 - Freedom - Poems, M .: "Goslitizdat"
1943 - German - M .: "Military Publishing House of the NPO"
1943 - Leningrad - L .: "Voenizdat NPO"
1943 - The fall of Duce - M .: "Gospolitizdat"
1943 - " New order"in Kursk - M .: "Pravda"
1943 - Poems about the war - M .: "Soviet writer"
1946 - Tree: Poems: 1938–1945 - M .: "Soviet Writer"
1946 - On the Roads of Europe - M .: Pravda
1947 - Storm - Magadan: publishing house "Soviet Kolyma" and M .: "Soviet writer"
1947 - In America - M .: "Moscow Worker"
1948 - Lion on the square - M .: "Art"
1950 - The Ninth Wave - M .: "Soviet Writer", 2nd ed. 1953
1952–1954 - Collected works in 5 volumes - M .: GIHL
1952 - For peace! - M.: "Soviet writer"
1954 - Thaw - in 1956 republished in two parts M .: "Soviet Writer"
1956 - Conscience of peoples - M .: "Soviet writer"
1958 - French notebooks - M .: "Soviet writer"
1959 - Poems: 1938 - 1958 - M .: "Soviet Writer"
1960 - India, Greece, Japan - M .: "Soviet Writer"; 2nd ed. M.: "Art"
1960 - Rereading

Date of Birth: Place of Birth: Place of death: Awards and prizes:

Ilya Grigorievich (Girshevich) Ehrenburg(January 14 (27), 1891, Kyiv - August 31, 1967, Moscow) - Soviet writer, poet, translator from French and Spanish, publicist and public figure, vice-president of the Higher Council of Youth, deputy of the USSR Supreme Council since 1950, twice winner of the Stalin Prize first degree (1942, 1948); laureate of the International Stalin Prize "For strengthening peace among peoples" (1952).

Biography

The revolution. Emigration. Homecoming

During the Great Patriotic War, he was a correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, wrote for other newspapers and for the Soviet Information Bureau. He became famous for his anti-fascist propaganda articles and works. A significant part of these articles, which were constantly published in the newspapers Pravda, Izvestia, and Krasnaya Zvezda, were collected in the three-volume journalism Voina (1942-44). Since 1942, he joined the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and was active in collecting and publishing materials about the Holocaust.

However, after the article “Enough!” in April 1945, Pravda published an article by the head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, G. F. Aleksandrov, “Comrade Ehrenburg simplifies.”

Together with Vasily Grossman, he created the famous Black Book about the Holocaust in the USSR.

Post-war period of creativity

After the war, he published the novel The Tempest (1946-1947; Stalin Prize of the first degree; 1948).

In 1948, Hollywood releases the film The Iron Curtain (directed by William Wellman, about the escape of GRU cipher Igor Gouzenko and Soviet espionage). On February 21 of the same year, Ehrenburg published the article “Film Provocateurs” in the newspaper “Culture and Life”, written on the instructions of the Minister of Cinematography I. G. Bolshakov.

Ehrenburg's position among Soviet writers was peculiar - on the one hand, he received material benefits, often traveled abroad, on the other hand, he was under the control of special services and often even received reprimands. The attitude of the authorities towards Ehrenburg in the era of Khrushchev and Brezhnev was just as ambivalent. After Stalin's death, he wrote the story The Thaw (1954), which gave its name to an entire era of Soviet history. In 1957, "French Notebooks" came out - an essay on French literature, painting and translations from Du Bellay. He is the author of the memoirs People, Years, Life, which were very popular among the Soviet intelligentsia in the 1960s and 1970s.

He died after a long illness on August 31, 1967. About 15,000 people came to say goodbye to the writer.

He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Compositions

The collected works of Ilya Ehrenburg in 5 volumes were published in 1952 by the State Publishing House of Fiction.

The next collection, more complete, in nine volumes, was released by the same publishing house in 1962-1966.

Family

First wife (1910-1913) - Katerina (Ekaterina) Ottovna Schmidt(1889-1977) (in Sorokin's second marriage), translator.
Their daughter - Irina Ilyinichna Ehrenburg(1911-1997), translator of French literature, was married to the writer Boris Matveyevich Lapin (1905-1941).
After the tragic death of her husband, she adopted and raised a girl:

He brought the girl Fanya from the war, in front of whom the Germans shot her parents and sisters in Vinnitsa. The older brothers served in the Polish army. Some old man managed to hide Fanya, but since it was associated with great risk, he ordered her: "Run, look for the partisans." And Fanya ran.
Ehrenburg brought this girl to Moscow precisely in the hope of distracting Irina from her grief. And she adopted Fanya. At first, everything was quite difficult, because the girl did not speak Russian well. She spoke in some monstrous mixture of languages. But then she quickly mastered Russian and even became an excellent student.
Irina and Fanya lived in Lavrushinsky; the poet Stepan Shchipachev lived there with his son Viktor. Fanya met Victor back in the writer's pioneer camp; the semi-childish romance continued in Moscow and ended in marriage. Mom entered the philological faculty at Moscow State University, but quickly realized that it was not hers, and, having entered the medical school, she became a doctor. The marriage did not last long - three years. But I still managed to be born.

Second wife since 1919 - Lyubov Mikhailovna Kozintseva(1900-1970), artist, student of Alexandra Exter (Kyiv, 1921), in Moscow at VKHUTEMAS with Robert Falk, Alexander Rodchenko, sister of film director Grigory Mikhailovich Kozintsev. Since 1922 participant of exhibitions in Berlin, Paris, Prague, Amsterdam. About 90 of her paintings and drawings are kept in the Department of Private Collections of the Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkin.

famous words

I. Ehrenburg owns the famous words: "See Paris and die."

"evil cosmopolitan"

A bloody struggle against cosmopolitanism began in the USSR. Ehrenburg also fell into the stream of "revelation" ...
I managed to infiltrate the "historical" writers' meeting and save the transcript of the speeches.
The speakers spoke viciously and unscrupulously. The writers of the "middle" generation were especially out of their skin: Sofronov, Gribachev, Surov3, V. Kozhevnikov; critic Yermilov.
On the podium with pomaded hair Anatoly Surov:
"I propose that Comrade Ehrenburg be expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers for the cosmopolitanism in his works."
Nikolay Gribachev:
“Comrades, a lot has been said here about Ehrenburg as a prominent and almost outstanding publicist. Yes, I agree, during World War II he wrote the articles necessary for the front and rear. But in his multifaceted novel The Tempest, he buried not only the main character Sergei Vlakhov, but took the life of all Russian people - positive heroes. The writer deliberately gave preference to the Frenchwoman Mado. The conclusion involuntarily suggests itself: let the Russian people die, and the French enjoy life? I support comrades Surov, Yermilov, Sofronov, what a citizen Ehrenburg, who despises everything Russian, cannot have a place in the ranks of "engineers of human souls," as the brilliant leader and wise teacher Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin called us."
On the podium is another "spiritual engineer", "cannibal of the century" - Mikhail Sholokhov:
"Ehrenburg is a Jew! The Russian people are alien to him in spirit, their aspirations and hopes are absolutely indifferent to him. He does not love and never loved Russia. The pernicious West, mired in vomit, is closer to him. I think that Ehrenburg is unjustifiably praised for the journalism of the war years. Weeds and mugs in the truest sense of the word are not needed by combat, Soviet literature ... "
I've been watching I.G. Ehrenburg. He sat quietly in the far corner of the hall. His gray eyes were half closed, it seemed that he was dozing. The presiding, subtle virtuoso of verbal battles, Alexei Surkov, gives the floor to the writer for "repentance".
Ilya Grigorievich slowly walked towards the stage. He slowly took a sip of the cold tea. With short-sighted eyes he looked around the room in which his former "comrades" were. Tousling his ash-gray hair, bending slightly, he quietly but distinctly said: “You just condemned to death not only my novel The Tempest, but made an attempt to ash all my work. Once in Sevastopol, a Russian officer approached me. He said: "Why are the Jews so cunning, for example, before the war, Levitan painted landscapes, sold them to museums and private owners for a lot of money, and during the war, instead of the front got a job as an announcer on the Moscow radio?" In the footsteps of an uncultured chauvinist officer, an uncultured academician-teacher wanders. Undoubtedly, every reader has the right to accept this or that book, or to reject it. Let me cite a few reader reviews. I am talking about them not to beg your forgiveness, but to teach you not to throw clods of dirt in human faces. Here are the lines from a letter from teacher Nikolaevskaya from distant Verkhoyansk: “My husband and three sons died in the war. I was left alone. Can you imagine how deep my grief is? I read your novel The Storm. This book, dear Ilya Grigorievich, is really helped. Believe me, I'm not at the age to lavish compliments. Thank you for writing such wonderful works." And here are the lines from a letter from Alexander Pozdnyakov: “I am a disabled person of the first group. I survived the blockade in my native St. Petersburg. In 1944 I ended up in a hospital. My legs were amputated there. I walk on prostheses. At first it was difficult. "Your "The Tempest" was read aloud in the evenings, during lunch breaks and smoke breaks. Some pages were reread twice. The Tempest is an honest, truthful novel. There are workers at the factory who fought against fascism in the ranks of the heroic French Resistance. You wrote what was, and for this we bow to you." After a significant pause, Ehrenburg said: "Let me finish my speech by reading one more letter, the most expensive of all the reader's comments I have received in the last thirty years. It is concise and will take you very little time."
There was silence. The most zealous fell silent. Photojournalists who illegally entered the hall prepared their cameras. They stopped paying attention. There was a sensation in the air. Suppressing a sly smile, Ehrenburg slowly began to read:
"Dear Ilya Grigoryevich! I have just read your wonderful The Tempest. Thank you for it. With respect, I. Stalin."
What was happening in the hall! Those same writers - "engineers-cannibals" who just scolded Ehrenburg last words and were ready to vote unanimously for his expulsion, now they applauded him without any shame. By nature, the writer was not one of those people who allow themselves to step on their heels.
On the podium Alexei Surkov:
"Comrades! Summing up this important and instructive meeting for all of us, I must say with all frankness and frankness that the writer and outstanding journalist Ilya Grigorievich Ehrenburg really wrote a wonderful book. He has always been at the forefront of our fronts in the struggle for socialist realism. We we are obliged to condemn the speakers here with you. Ehrenburg's "Storm" is the conscience of the time, the conscience of our generation, the conscience and sign of the era ... "
For the novel "The Tempest" Ilya Ehrenburg received the Stalin Prize of the first degree. For life, the writer remained faithful to Stalin ...

Ehrenburg Ilya Grigorievich served during the Great Patriotic War. He worked in the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda. His articles were published not only in this newspaper, but also in others - Izvestia, Pravda, some divisional newspapers and abroad. In total, about 3 thousand of his articles were published in the period from 1941 to 1945. Anti-fascist pamphlets and articles were included in a three-volume journalism entitled "War" (1942-44).

At the same time, Ilya Grigorievich continued to create and publish poems and poems about the war. The idea of his novel "The Tempest" appeared during the war years. The work was completed in 1947. A year later, Ehrenburg received the State Prize for it. In 1943 "Poems about the War" were published.

Post-war years in the life and work of Ehrenburg

Ilya Grigorievich postwar period continued creative activity. In 1951-52. his novel The Ninth Wave was published, as well as the story The Thaw (1954-56). The story sparked heated controversy. Its name began to be used to denote a whole period that our country went through in its socio-political development.

Ehrenburg in 1955-57 wrote literary-critical essays on French art. Their common name is "French notebooks". Ilya Grigorievich in 1956 achieved the holding of the first exhibition of Picasso in the capital of the USSR.

In the late 1950s, Ilya Erenburg began to work on the creation of a book of memoirs. The works included in it are united under the title "People. Years. Life". This book was published in the 1960s. Ilya Ehrenburg divided it into six parts. "People. Years. Life" does not include all of his memoirs. Only in 1990 they were published in full.

Social activities of Ilya Grigorievich

Until the end of his life, Ilya Ehrenburg was active in public life. In the period from 1942 to 1948 he was a member of the EAC (European Anti-Fascist Committee). And in 1943 he became the head of the JAC commission, which worked on the creation of the "Black Book", which described the atrocities that the Nazis committed against the Jews.

This book, however, was banned. It was published later in Israel. Due to a conflict with the leadership in 1945, the writer Ilya Ehrenburg left this commission.

JAC was liquidated in November 1948. A trial began against its leaders, which ended only in 1952. Ilya Ehrenburg also appeared in the case file. His arrest, however, was not authorized by Stalin.

Ehrenburg in April 1949 was one of the organizers of the First World Peace Congress. Also, since 1950, Ilya Grigorievich participated in the activities of the World Peace Council as vice president.

Awards

Ehrenburg was elected a deputy several times. Twice he was a laureate of the State Prize of the USSR (in 1942 and 1948), and in 1952 he received the International Lenin Prize. In 1944, Ilya Grigorievich was awarded the Order of Lenin. And the French government made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

Ehrenburg's personal life

Ilya Ehrenburg was married twice. He lived for some time with Ekaterina Schmidt in a civil marriage. In 1911, daughter Irina was born (years of life - 1911-1997), who became a translator and writer. The second time Ilya Grigorievich married Lyubov Kozintseva, an artist. He lived with her until the end of his days.

Death of Ilya Ehrenburg

After a long illness, Ilya Ehrenburg died in Moscow on August 31, 1967. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. A year later, a monument was erected on the grave. On it, according to the drawing of Pablo Picasso, his friend, the profile of Ilya Grigorievich is embossed.

We hope that from this article you have learned something new about a person like Ilya Ehrenburg. His biography, of course, is short, but we tried not to miss the most important points.

The revolution. Emigration. Return

Ilya Ehrenburg was born on January 14 (26), 1891 in Kyiv into a prosperous Jewish family. His father - Gersh Gershonovich (Gersh Germanovich, Grigory Grigorievich) Ehrenburg - was an engineer and merchant of the 2nd guild; mother - Khana Berkovna (Anna Borisovna) Ehrenburg (nee Arinstein, 1857-1918) - a housewife. In 1895, the family moved to Moscow, where his father got the job of director of the Khamovniki beer and mead factory. Since 1901, he studied at the 1st Moscow Gymnasium together with N.I. Bukharin.

Since 1905, he participated in revolutionary activities, joined the Bolsheviks. In January 1908 he was arrested, spent six months in prison and was released pending trial, but emigrated to France in December. Gradually moved away from the Bolsheviks. In Paris, he was engaged in literary activity, rotated in the circle of modernist artists, published the collections "Poems" (1910), "I Live" (1911), "Everyday Life" (1913), a book of translations by F. Villon (1913).

In 1914-1917 he was a correspondent for the Russian newspapers Utro Rossii and Birzhevye Vedomosti on the Western Front. In 1917 he returned to Russia. Having negatively perceived the victory of the Bolsheviks (collection of poems "Prayer for Russia", 1918), in 1921 he again went abroad.

In 1921-1924 he lived in Berlin, in 1922 he published the philosophical and satirical novel "The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disciples ...", which gives an interesting mosaic picture of the life of Europe and Russia during the First World War and the Revolution, but most importantly - a set of amazing by its accuracy of prophecy. Leonid Zhukhovitsky wrote about this:

Decades later, Japanese writers and journalists tried to find out everything from Ehrenburg: where did he get information about the upcoming bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1922?

I. Ehrenburg was a propagandist of avant-garde art (“And yet it spins”, 1922). In 1923 he wrote a collection of short stories "Thirteen Pipes" and the novel "Trust D. E." Ehrenburg was close to the left circles of French society and actively collaborated with the Soviet press. Since 1923 he has been working as a correspondent for Izvestia. His name and talent as a publicist were widely used by Soviet propaganda to create an attractive image of the Stalinist regime abroad. From the beginning of the 1930s, he constantly lived in the USSR and began to convey in his works the idea of "the inevitability of the victory of socialism." He published the novels The Second Day (1934), The Book for Adults (1936).

During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, Ehrenburg was a war correspondent for Izvestia; acted as an essayist, prose writer (collection of short stories Outside the Truce, 1937; novel What a Man Needs, 1937), poet (collection of poems Loyalty, 1941). After the defeat of the Republicans, he moved to Paris. After the German occupation of France, he took refuge in the Soviet embassy.

Military period of creativity

I was told by people who deserve complete trust that in one of the large combined partisan detachments there was the following paragraph of a handwritten order:
"Newspapers after reading to use at the heat, with the exception of articles by Ilya Ehrenburg."
This is truly the shortest and most joyful review for the writer's heart that I have ever heard of.

K.Simonov Evg.Yevtushenko

In 1940 he returned to the USSR, where he wrote and published the novel The Fall of Paris (1941) about the political, moral, and historical reasons for the defeat of France by Germany in World War II.

During the Great Patriotic War, he was a correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, wrote for other newspapers and for the Soviet Information Bureau. He became famous for his anti-fascist propaganda articles and works. A significant part of these articles, which were constantly published in the newspapers Pravda, Izvestia, and Krasnaya Zvezda, were collected in the three-volume journalism Voina (1942-44). In 1942, he joined the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and was active in collecting and publishing materials about the Holocaust.

Together with V. S. Grossman, he compiled the famous Black Book on the genocide Jewish people on the territory of the USSR.

Post-war creativity

After the war, he released a dilogy - the novels The Tempest (1946-1947) and The Ninth Wave (1950).

After Stalin's death, he wrote the story The Thaw (1954), which gave its name to an entire era of Soviet history. In 1957, "French Notebooks" came out - an essay on French literature, painting and translations from Du Bellay. He is the author of the memoirs People, Years, Life, which were very popular among the Soviet intelligentsia in the 1960s and 1970s. Ehrenburg introduced the younger generation to many "forgotten" names, contributed to the publication of both forgotten (Tsvetaeva) and young (Slutsky, Gudzenko) authors. Promoted new Western art.

He died after a long illness on August 31, 1967. About 15,000 people came to say goodbye to the writer.

He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Compositions

The collected works of Ilya Ehrenburg in 5 volumes were published in 1951-1954 by the State Publishing House of Fiction.

The next collection, more complete, in nine volumes, was released by the same publishing house in 1962-1966.

Awards and prizes

Stalin Prize of the first degree (1942) - for the novel "The Fall of Paris" (1941)
Stalin Prize of the first degree (1948) - for the novel "The Tempest" (1947)
International Stalin Prize "For strengthening peace between peoples" (1952)
two orders of Lenin
Order of the Red Banner of Labor
Order of the Red Star
Legion of Honor

Membership in organizations

Vice-President of the SCM since 1950. Member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR since 1950.

Family

First wife (1910-1913) - translator Katerina (Ekaterina) Ottovna Schmidt (1889-1977, in Sorokin's second marriage). Their daughter, the translator of French literature, Irina Ilyinichna Ehrenburg (1911-1997), was married to the writer Boris Matveyevich Lapin (1905-1941). After the tragic death of her husband, she adopted and raised a girl:

The second wife (since 1919) is the artist Lyubov Mikhailovna Kozintseva (1900-1970), sister of film director Grigory Mikhailovich Kozintsev, student of Alexandra Exter (Kyiv, 1921), Robert Falk, Alexander Rodchenko. Since 1922 she has been a participant of exhibitions in Berlin, Paris, Prague, Amsterdam .. About 90 of her paintings and drawings are kept in the Department of Private Collections of the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkin.

famous phrase

I. Ehrenburg owns the famous words: "See Paris and die."

Bibliography

1916 - Poems about eve
About Semyon Drozd's vest, M., 1917
1918 - Prayer for Russia
Fire. Gomel, 1919
The face of war. Sofia, 1920; Berlin, 1923
Incredible stories. Berlin, 1922
1922 - The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito
And yet she turns around. Berlin, "Helikon", 1922
Six stories about easy ends. Berlin, 1922
1923 - Life and death of Nikolai Kurbov
1923 - Thirteen Pipes
1923 - Trust "D. E."
1924 - Love of Jeanne Ney
1925 - Rvach
1926 - Summer 1925
1927 - In Protochny Lane
1928 - White Coal or Werther's Tears
1928 - The turbulent life of Lasik Roytshvanets (published in the USSR in 1990)
1928 - Time Visa
1929 - Conspiracy of equals
1931 - United Front (not published in Russia)
1933 - Second day
1934 - Protracted denouement
1936 - Book for adults
1941 - Fall of Paris
1942-1944 - War
1947 - Tempest
1950 - The Ninth Wave
1954 - Thaw
1974 - Chronicle of Courage. Publishing house "Soviet writer", Moscow, 1974 (Publicistic articles of the war years) Hardcover, 384 pages, circulation 30,000 copies. (price 64 kop.)
Collected works. ZiF.

I'm trying to restore traits. About Babel - and not only about him Pirozhkova Antonina Nikolaevna

Ilya Grigorievich Ehrenburg

The Committee on the literary heritage of Babel included: K. A. Fedin, L. M. Leonov, I. G. Ehrenburg, L. I. Slavin, G. N. Moonblit, S. G. Gekht and myself.

From the very first days after the creation of this Commission, it became clear that neither Fedin nor Leonov wanted to participate in the work. All letters with questions about Babel that came to Fedin, as to the chairman of the Commission, he forwarded to me without reading. The duties of the chairman of the commission were performed by Ilya Grigorievich Erenburg.

After Babel’s arrest, I didn’t see him, because, being the wife of an “enemy of the people,” I tried not to meet writers who had previously been in our house. But through Valentina Aronovna, I knew about his life, about his trips and returns, and also about the fact that already at the end of the war, Ehrenburg found out about the Jewish twelve-year-old girl Feiga Fishman, the only survivor after the execution of Jews in one of the Ukrainian towns. The girl fled into the forest from the column when they were being led to the execution, she fled with her father and several other people. Her mother and sisters were shot on the same day, and later her father, who was hiding in the forest, was also killed. Her father managed to leave Feiga with a peasant friend on a secluded farm, from where she was later taken to one of military units Red Army and reported its fate to Ehrenburg.

Ilya Grigorievich wrote a letter to the girl and asked the military to bring her to him in Moscow so that she could study at school.

When the girl was brought to Moscow, Ehrenburg suggested that willing Jews adopt her. Abram Grigoryevich Tankilevich, Chief Engineer of Metrostroy, immediately responded to this call. I knew him well, he was the kindest person, I knew his wife Galina Mikhailovna and two daughters.

And once, when the girl Fanya was already in this new family, Ehrenburg found out that Tankilevich's daughters go to school, and Fanya sits at home and does not study. He demanded that the girl be brought back to him. And then she was adopted by the daughter of Ilya Grigorievich, Irina Ilyinichna.

After a long break, my first meeting with Ehrenburg took place in the summer of 1954 during my efforts to rehabilitate Babel.

I also turned to him for advice related to the work of the Commission on the literary heritage of Babel, especially when the question arose of publishing his works, which had not been published since 1936. Usually Ilya Grigorievich called me by phone, and when we moved to another apartment, where there was no telephone for eleven months, he sent me telegrams saying: “We need to talk. Ehrenburg. We met quite often while negotiations were underway on the publication of Babel's one-volume "Favorites", for which Ilya Grigorievich wrote a preface. When we were invited to the Khudozhestvennaya Literatura publishing house to meet with the editor of the collection, we had to meet with the deputy chief editor. We are I. G. Ehrenburg, G. N. Moonblit, S. G. Gekht, L. I. Slavin and I, that is, almost the entire composition of the commission on the literary heritage of Babel. While waiting for everyone to gather, Ehrenburg, Moonblit and I sat in front of the stairs leading to the second floor of the publishing house. Hecht came, followed by Slavin. And Slavin told us about Fadeev's suicide. I looked at Ehrenburg, he didn’t even get excited, and then he says: “Fadeev had a hopeless situation, he was besieged by returning prisoners and their wives. They asked: how could it happen that the letters that I wrote to you personally ended up on the investigator's desk during my interrogation? Really, how? After all, Fadeev was not arrested, searches and seizures of papers were not made from him. So, he gave it himself? I was terribly struck by the calmness and even indifference with which this news was greeted by the members of our commission, as if it surprised no one and certainly did not upset anyone at all.

When the appointed time came, we went upstairs to the office of the deputy editor-in-chief. The latter, having seated us, invited us to come into the office of the editor of Babel's book. After a while the door opened and a woman entered, tall, plump, with high breasts and a good Russian face. Long earrings rattled in her ears, and the sleeves of her white blouse were rolled up. I looked at Ehrenburg. He froze with such an astonished expression on his face that Moonblit and I looked at each other and could hardly restrain ourselves from laughing. Not over a woman, of course, but over Ehrenburg. After we were introduced and we talked about the composition of the collection and agreed on the next meeting, Ehrenburg said already on the street: “If such a woman brought a boiling samovar into the room, I would not be at all surprised, but ... Babel's editor ?!”

Moonblit later told me, "I get a bitter taste in my mouth when I talk to her." And once he quarreled with the editor and said: “Either I, or she.” I asked Ehrenburg to persuade Moonblit not to see the editor again. I had quite normal relations with her, and only once, when she told me: “Let's throw out the Cemetery in Kozin from the collection - a small thing, it doesn’t give anything”, I almost broke down, but restrained myself and somehow persuaded the editor leave this amazing little masterpiece in the collection. Many of Babel's stories were refused to be included in the collection, including such as "My first fee", "Gapa Guzhva" and "Kolyvushka". Ehrenburg, angry at this, said: "There will be time - everyone will print it, but now it's good that at least such a collection will come out."

When Ilya Grigorievich wrote memoirs about Babel for the book “People, Years, Life”, he invited me to his place, seated me at his desk, sat down in an armchair opposite, put a typewritten copy of the manuscript in front of me and said: “Read and do your comments."

I read the manuscript and found a few minor errors. So, for example, Babel was not friends with jockeys, but with riders, the writer Hecht was not a close friend of Babel, he was his admirer, Babel had no mahogany furniture and no desk, he loved simple tables. It was not at all necessary to correct all this, but Ehrenburg wanted to be precise and therefore corrected almost everything, and threw out some of the memories.

Once, in 1957, Ehrenburg's wife Lyubov Mikhailovna called me and said that he would like to meet my daughter Lida, and asked us to come to them. Lida was then twenty years old, and she was a student at the Architectural Institute. Having met her, Ehrenburg said: “When they told me that Lida looked like Babel, I was horrified. Babel had a good face for a middle-aged writer, but for the girl to look like Babel ... And here she looks like her father, and very pretty ... ”Ehrenburg seated us, sat opposite in a large armchair next to Lyubov Mikhailovna and immediately, turning to Lida , began to tell her about her father, about their meetings in Paris. Sometimes Lyubov Mikhailovna interrupted him, and then Ehrenburg got angry with her. If Ehrenburg, remembering something, interrupted Lyubov Mikhailovna, she would get angry. And Lida, distinguished by her Babel insight, noticed this very well. And also, after the visit, she told me in detail what kind of jacket Ehrenburg wore, what kind of tie and what kind of socks with a sparkle. When Ilya Grigorievich celebrated his seventieth birthday in 1961, he wanted me to come with Lida: “I want at least one young face". He proudly introduced her to the guests, among whom were Kozlovsky, Sarra Lebedeva, Kaverin, Slutsky and many others.

Ehrenburg helped me with advice and in compiling another collection of Babel's works, published in 1966. It managed to include several stories that were not included in the 1957 collection, but again cuts and again without the stories “My first fee”, “Gapa Guzhva”, “Kolyvushka”. Babel's articles, speeches and memoirs, as well as a small number of letters were included. Ehrenburg said that he liked the story "Oil", and was very annoyed that the story "My first fee" was not published again.

One day I received a call from the Krugozor magazine and was asked to give me something from Babel's publications. Ilya Grigoryevich advised me to give one or two publications of 1922 from the newspaper Zarya Vostoka. We chose "Without a homeland" and "In a rest home." Then the editors of the journal asked me to persuade Ehrenburg to write a short preface. He said: "Well, I will write to them that the writer Babel began with these publications, and how he received his first fee, readers will learn from the story" My first fee "".

And only in 1967 this story was published in the magazine "Star of the East". It happened like this. I came to the publishing house Khudozhestvennaya Literatura to the editor of Babel's collection "Selected" in order to pick up from the manuscript submitted there everything that the editors did not take into the collection. And when I was about to leave, a young man of strong-willed appearance approached me and timidly asked if I would agree to give something to the royalty-free issue of the Star of the East, published in favor of the victims of the earthquake in Tashkent. I said: "Take whatever you want from what was not taken in the collection." And he seized everything with alacrity. It was funny to me, because I decided: I will read it and take nothing. And suddenly it turned out that everything he took was published. This issue of the magazine thundered throughout the country, there were so many interesting things in it - Babel, and Platonov, and Bulgakov, and Tsvetaeva, and Akhmadulina's lovely poem "Chills", which no one in Moscow wanted to print. There were rumors that the editor in Tashkent got hit for this issue of the magazine, but on the other hand, when he came to Moscow, he was carried in his arms and treated to restaurants.

In 1964, I. E. Babel's seventieth birthday was celebrated. The Commission on Literary Heritage, on the initiative of Ilya Grigorievich, decided to apply to the Central Committee to D. A. Polikarpov with a letter of the following content:

“The secretariat of the Writers' Union has decided to celebrate Babel's 70th birthday, and one of the points of this decision is the organization of an evening in memory of Babel in the House of Writers. The hall of the club is not even capable of accommodating all Moscow writers. Meanwhile, the interest of readers in the work of Babel is so great that, in our opinion, one should not be limited to this audience. We ask you to help us obtain permission for the device, in addition to the evening at the House of Writers, an open evening at the Polytechnic Museum, where the works of Babel will be read and where people who knew Babel will talk about him. We are confident that you will meet us halfway in this matter.”

This letter was signed by Ehrenburg, Slavin, Moonblit and myself. Ilya Grigoryevich suggested that Fedin, who was the chairman of the commission on the literary heritage of Babel, also sign the letter. For this, Ehrenburg sent a letter to Fedin:

“Dear Konstantin Alexandrovich! I am sending you the text of the letter with which I. E. Babel's literary heritage committee decided to address D. A. Polikarpov. I am addressing you as chairman of the commission and as Konstantin Alexandrovich Fedin with a request to place yours in front of our signatures. I am convinced that you will do it. Ehrenburg.

Fedin did not sign the letter and replied that he did not consider it necessary to arrange an evening at the Polytechnic Museum. Fedin's answer brought Ehrenburg into such anger that I did not know behind him. And our assumption that the hall of the House of Writers would not accommodate everyone was justified.

Herzen Street, where the CDL is located, was crowded with people before the evening began. I had to accompany Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova to the evening, and despite the fact that we arrived early, we barely made it to the door. The hall was packed, the foyer filled too. All the doors from the hall to the foyer were wide open so that those who did not get into the hall could at least hear something. Later, Nikolai Robertovich Erdman told me that he stood in the lobby all evening.

Preparing for this evening, Ilya Grigorievich decided to read reviews of foreign writers about the works of Babel. He wrote letters to some of them and received replies.

Yaroslav Ivashkevich writes: “I must note the extreme popularity of Babel in Poland. This is evidenced by the evening at the Student Theater, which was repeated many times. The artist Semion recited by heart eight stories by Babel, four from Cavalry and four from Odessa. I personally think Babel is a wonderful writer. Everything about him is so precise and so concise, as if drawn with a pencil with a clear outline. Of course, I prefer his tragic and dramatic stories, they are deeper and more accurate. This is a very good example of writer's restraint…”

I quote the letter of the Czech writer Maria Maierova here in full: “Isaac Babel was one of the first literary guests whose books showed the Czech reader Soviet reality. His small work The Cavalry had a profound effect in its theme and form. It was the start emotional connection between the nascent Red Army and the Czech communists, who foresaw in it a solid support of the communist idea, which later, in 1945, so richly turned into the love of the entire Czechoslovak people, when Soviet army wrested our homeland from the shackles of fascism.

However, at the same time it was admiration for the novelty and richness of the style, which captured the reader and firmly entered the writer's thought. Babel's Cavalry, its energetic way of expression, is firmly rooted in the minds of Babel's literary brethren, despite the fact that his books have not been translated or published for many years. Babel has not ceased to live with us to this day as an inimitable artist who draws the Soviet man, and again dazzles us with the crystals of his sketches, which have just now come out under the title "Stories" and which point even to the youngest readers to the creative power of the author, and to young prose writers - that with Babel, already with the first literary visitors after the World War, a writer came to us, depicting the world not in a hackneyed way, but in a way that is modern to this day. Because of this way of seeing the world, he can also be a teacher for the youngest, for those who are trying to find the words and construction of the work.

Two replies to Ehrenburg's letters came from London. Graham Greene writes: "In England we have very few opportunities to fully appreciate the works of Isaac Babel, and I can only say that the little that exists in translation causes admiration and a desire to see fuller translations of his works."

Charles Snow wrote in a telegram: “An extremely high opinion of the works of Babel. In the local literary circles, this opinion is almost unanimous.

We already had Jack Lindsay's review. Here is what he wrote about the works of Babel: “The stories of Isaac Babel during the Civil War in Russia have a bright, pronounced originality. The tension of feelings is combined in them with the richness and accuracy of pictorial colors, and as a result of this combination, like an explosion, a poetic image is born in which knowledge is clearly and strongly revealed. life situations. At first glance, Babel's stories may seem rough, but this is mainly because the roughness of the material itself could not be avoided. The writer himself is always intensely present both in the soul of his image and in what surrounds him.

A receptive Odessa Jew, he spent the war among the Cossacks. The clash between his human sadness and the furious, exploding energy of the Cossacks was the most extreme and led to changes in him after the war and to his acceptance of the revolution.

No matter how complicated Babel's relationship with the outside world was, he always remained sincere and truthful in relation to the human essence - hence his art of bright, unprecedented purity. Babel was the victim of the purges of the late thirties. Now his works have been republished in the Soviet Union, and this is a recognition of his remarkable contribution to Soviet and world literature.

A letter arrived from Stockholm from Artur Lundqvist. “I got acquainted with the work of Isaac Babel quite a long time ago. Already in 1929, his Cavalry was published in a magnificent Swedish translation. The book immediately captivated me with its sparkling temperament and peculiar artistic skill. I was so carried away that for a long time I seemed to be looking at the world through the eyes of Babel. My fantasy turned me into a participant in his military trials and experiences with their impulsive dashing, with their transition from recklessness to melancholy. Some of my poetic experiments of that period undoubtedly bear traces of my passion for Babel. The book disappeared from my field of vision, and I often thought of it with longing and a feeling of great loss. Two years later, it again fell into my hands, and I re-read it again with joy and excitement. Meanwhile, the Swedish reader gets the opportunity to get to know Babel's work more closely - a translation of a selection from the Odessa Tales is published, the charming skill of which has an impact on the younger generation. The young poet and critic Folke Isakson writes a long essay about Babel, full of admiration for his talent.

Personally, on me, on many other writers, and indeed on lovers of literature of my generation, Babel's work made an indelible impression. We were waiting for his new books, looking for them. We mourned over his fate, the fate of the rejected and unrecognized, and in last years rejoiced at his rehabilitation, the new life of his work, which became possible in the Soviet Union.

When a few years ago I had the opportunity to meet the great and subtle writer K. Paustovsky, we immediately agreed on mutual admiration for Babel.

Now the work of Hemingway is highly valued in the Soviet Union. In this regard, I would like to point out the qualitative contrast between the prose art of Babel and the art of Hemingway. Babel, who is also a convinced realist, uses, however, a more subjective and free method. He shows more scope for lyrical feelings and personal experiences. Where he has a blazing heat, Hemingway has a calm coldness. At least for me, with my affinity for poetry, Babel is a direct and exciting artist. His talent has that richness of variety that often makes it possible to create unforgettable pages.

Initially, it was assumed that Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg would be the chairman of the evening in memory of Babel. But the Union of Writers ordered otherwise - Fedin was appointed chairman. All members of the Commission on the literary heritage of Babel were upset and outraged, since Fedin clearly did not want to take part in the work of the Commission and did not want to sign a letter to Polikarpov. In addition, it was not clear how Ehrenburg would react to this. What if he doesn't come tonight at all? Ehrenburg came, but did not sit on the podium on the stage, but in the first row in the hall. I also refused to sit on the presidium.

The evening was opened by Fedin, then the writers Nikulin, Bondarin, Slavin, Lidin, Moonblit and the critic Pankov, an employee of the Znamya magazine, spoke. Ehrenburg was the last to speak. I quote his speech almost in full, as it was transcribed:

“I could not but speak, although here many spoke well about Isaac Emmanuilovich and although I wrote about him. This is the biggest friend I have ever had in my life. He was younger than me by three and a half years, but I jokingly called him "the wise rebbe" because he was wise man. He looked amazingly deeply into life.

He understood that a person's gaze cannot embrace infinity, and he treated with some disgust the authors (even very respectable ones, and whom he personally treated well), who tried to see everything. He often said: "better go deeper." He wanted to see what he could see deeply.

He liked to surround himself with uncertainty, to hide something, not to say where he went. In Paris, he somehow went to me and did not come, but I waited. Turns out his daughter asked, "Where are you going?" But he did not have the strength to lie, and he said: "To Ehrenburg." And when he said this, he could no longer come to me and went in the opposite direction.

He was not a romantic in art. The word “realism” is absolutely applicable to it, but this is human realism, this is the only adjective that in this case can be applied to this word. That cruelty that can be found in all Babel's stories, how did he soften it? Love, complicity in a conspiracy with the characters and readers, great spiritual kindness. He was very kind and a good man not in the philistine sense, as they say, but really, and the fact that they said that he did not believe in the luck of mentally careless writers, this very much expresses the whole nature of Isaac Emmanuilovich. When he was waiting for me in Paris one day, he reread little story Chekhov, and when I arrived (and I was late), he said to me: “Do you know what is amazing? Chekhov was a very kind person." He cursed with the French, who dared to criticize this or that in Maupassant, said that Maupassant was impeccable. But in one of his last conversations with me, he said: "Everything is good with Maupassant, but there is not enough heart." He suddenly felt this element of Maupassant's terrible loneliness and isolation.

Babel was very inquisitive. I can't say that I knew the jolly Babel, he was neither jovial nor cheerful - nothing that was required in order to be approved. He was a sad man who knew how to laugh and who had a very interesting life. In life, he was especially interested in the dual and mysterious that generally interests people of all ages - death and love ... How much he had heard enough confessions that he knew how to call!

In Paris, when he had no money, he could pay as much as he wanted to a girl to talk to him in a cafe, and not go to dinner himself. He could not see a woman's bag without asking, often unsuccessfully: "Can I see what's inside?"

I remember this time well. Babel knew how to be very careful. He can not be called a man who climbed ahead. He knew that he should not go to Yezhov's house, but he was interested in understanding the key to our life and death. In one of the last meetings, when I was finally released to Spain, we were sitting with him in the Metropol restaurant. There they danced, music played, and he, leaning towards me, said in a whisper: "Yezhov is only a performer." This was after long visits at home, conversations with Yezhov's wife, whom he had known for a long time. It was the only wise phrase which I remember from everything I heard at the time. Babel saw more than us and understood people. That's really who never thought in terms of categories and abstractions, but always a living person.

It was formed by the revolution, and the fate of the person who is now in front of you was tragic (points to the portrait). He was one of the most devoted writers of the revolution, and he believed in progress. He believed that everything would turn out for the best.

And then they killed him... I remember once he came gloomy at the beginning of 1938 to me in Lavrushinsky. He sat down, looked around and said: "Let's go to another room." He was afraid to talk, there was a telephone in the room. We moved into another room, and he said in a whisper: "I'll tell you the worst thing now." He said that he was taken to a factory where books were turned back into paper, and he told with extraordinary force and expressiveness how healthy girls sit and tear paper out of its bindings. And every day there was a huge destruction of books. And he said: "It's scary!"; I was overwhelmed by the conversation, and he said: “Maybe this is just the beginning?” It was one of his themes about bespectacled people, about those who read books, about those who think, about those who have an opinion about this element. And he spoke about those girls, as Dovzhenko saw them in "Earth", as about the elements that had risen from the earth. It was one of our last meetings.

I don't know what he wrote next. He said, it is true, that he was looking for simplicity. His simplicity was not what was required, it was simplicity after complexity. But I want to say one thing - he is a great writer. I'm not saying this because I still love him. Speaking in the language of literary critics, objectively, this is the pride of Soviet literature.

We are at the House of Writers. We are all writers or writers' fans, we all have something to do with Soviet literature.

What does rehabilitation mean? These are not, say, the stupid things that were written in the file of his case, which the prosecutor was surprised at and which were really stupid. This was known before. Those who are alive are obliged to Babel and the reader. Is it not surprising that the country of the language in which he wrote, this country publishes it ten times less than in the socialist countries and in the West. After all, it's scary.

Yesterday I received a letter from Ivashkevich. Knowing that this evening would be, he wrote a lot of good things about Babel and said that in Poland in 1961 a translation of his book, published in Moscow in 1957, was published twice, and the recently published small twenty-thousand edition sold out within one day. We published in 1957 - and the cover, nothing can be done. Isn't it terrible that we asked to arrange an evening at the Polytechnic, and they answered us: "No, only at the House of Writers." And people stood on the street, they could not get here. This is a writer of the revolution, a writer whom our people loved.

If he were alive, if he were mediocre, then ten times already his collected works would have been reprinted. (Prolonged applause.) Don't think that I am screaming in vain. I want us, the writers, to finally intervene in this matter, so that we tell the publishing house that Babel needs to be republished so that we can arrange the evenings. Why do the Poles, the Czechs arrange parties, and here, if it weren’t for Zhuravlev, to whom I am deeply grateful for Babel, we wouldn’t even know his name.

After all, a whole generation has grown up during this time, which does not know him, is it really impossible to make his stories, which Gorky liked so much, be available to the reader? After all, we, respecting the reader, think not only that we should write much better, but we want the people to read good writers, this is our duty. If not us, the writers, then who will do it?

Earlier I wanted to give reviews of many foreign writers about Babel: both what is written, and what was sent now, and what I remember from memory. In a hotel in Madrid, I remember Hemingway, who had read Babel for the first time, said: “I never thought that arithmetic was important for understanding literature. I was scolded for being too brief, and I found Babel's story even more concise than mine, which said more. So this is a sign of opportunity. You can squeeze the cottage cheese even tighter so that all the water is gone.

When Isaac Emmanuilovich went up to the podium at the Paris Peace Congress and spoke without a piece of paper about how they read on collective farms, he showed the spiritual freshness of our people. When he left, a middle-aged, long-haired Heinrich Mann jumped up from his seat and asked: “Can you introduce me to Babel?”

I do not know a country and great writers who would not feel the power of Babel's sincerity, humanity, and who would not love him. Only evil enemies can be like that.

And now seventy years. We are, as it were, at his feast. I agree to stand up and serve like a dog in front of all organizations, as many as they say, in order to finally beg for the reprinting of books that have become a rarity now that there are no obstacles. No paper? Let me turn off one volume of mine. One cannot go through the patience of people who want to hear about a long-dead writer. It is impossible to understand that they close the doors, and wait until they celebrate their eightieth birthday, maybe then someone will get in.

I would like all writers to help in the implementation of one thing - so that our people can read Babel. Not enough paper to publish one book? This will not be a collection of works, and even the longest. There must be paper for it. (Applause.)

His set of friends was different even in Paris, where he had not been for so long. These are wine merchants, jockeys, drivers, but, of course, Monsieur Triolet, Elsa Triolet's first husband, is a horseman. How he talked about horses, about stallions! His judges were smiling, his cruelty was humorous. He softened all the terrible places.

I compared the diary of the First Cavalry with the stories. He almost did not change his surnames, the episodes are the same, he illuminated everything with some kind of wisdom. He said, “That's how it was. Here are the people, these people committed atrocities and suffered, mocked and died, and everyone had their own life and their own truth. From the same facts and the same phrases that he hastily wrote down in a notebook, he later wrote.

But enough. I was touched by the speeches of all who knew Isaac Emmanuilovich, and by the way they listened, and, apparently, not only this hall, but also its surroundings, corridors and on the street. I am happy for Isaac Emmanuilovich. I am glad that here Antonina Nikolaevna and Babel’s daughter Lida heard and saw how much they love Babel.”

Ehrenburg's speech, delivered without any notes, was interrupted many times and ended in thunderous applause. After his performance, the artist of the Art Theater Nikolai Penkov read Babel's story "My First Goose" superbly, and then Dmitry Nikolaevich Zhuravlev, as always brilliantly, delivered two stories - "The Beginning" and "Di Grasso".

On the stage stood a portrait of a smiling Babel, very well done by the photographer of the House of Writers in life size or even a little more.

After an evening at the House of Writers, in the same 1964, an evening was held in memory of Babel in the city of Zhukovsky, which the engineers insisted on. aviation industry. Ehrenburg's performance at that evening was just as brilliant. The poet Andrei Voznesensky could only say that he had recently become acquainted with Babel's work and was stunned. At the evening after the performances, the film "Benya Krik" was shown, which the organizers of the evening managed to get in the film archive in White Stolby.

Since then, neither the eightieth nor the ninetieth birthday of Babel was celebrated by the Writers' Union, he was too frightened by the confluence of such a mass of people at the seventieth birthday.

In 1967, after the birth of my grandson Andryusha, the question arose of a dacha for the summer. Lyubov Mikhailovna wanted us to settle next to them in New Jerusalem. I spoke with the owner of the neighboring dacha, but he was going to sell it and volunteered to find me another one. And found. We settled in the dacha of Professor Skramtaev, with his widow, not close to the Ehrenburgs, but still in the same dacha settlement with them. The Ehrenburgs were not among the walking summer residents, in their family only two Ehrenburg sisters usually went for a walk - already elderly single women. We, on the contrary, were summer residents, walking a lot around the neighborhood. Therefore, we usually came to the Ehrenburgs ourselves. One day I come: Lyubov Mikhailovna is nowhere to be found, and Ilya Grigoryevich is in his room tapping on a typewriter. I sat down on the sofa in the hall and waited for one of the hosts to appear. And suddenly the office door opens and Ehrenburg says in surprise: “Why didn’t you come to me?” "I didn't mean to disturb you." “But I would be so glad to be interfered with, I don’t want to work.”

When Ilya Grigoryevich found out that I wanted to start a small vegetable garden at the dacha, he was very inspired and immediately took me to his office, where various seeds were kept in boxes of cigarettes in his fireplace. He poured me seeds of radishes, carrots, turnips, and when I asked if there were any seeds of leeks, he found some kind of box and gave it to me. I had never planted a leek before, so I didn't know the type of seed. But it seemed suspicious to me that the seeds that Ilya Grigorievich gave me looked like beet seeds. However, Ehrenburg's authority as a gardener was so high that I sowed a whole garden bed with these seeds. When the first two leaves appeared, I plucked one plant and went to Ehrenburg, and showed: this is what again sprouted instead of leeks. He began to wonder what it could be. We went together to his vast garden, examined all the beds, but such a plant was not found anywhere. Then we decided: let it grow, let's see what happens next. When another month passed, the whole bed was filled with dense greenery. They were large leaves on thick stems. I tore off one and showed it to Ehrenburg. His surprise knew no bounds. Agronomist Nikolai Grigoryevich was urgently called. He also did not know such a plant. Then they opened all the catalogs of vegetables and finally found it in the English catalog. It was a plant related to beets. Europeans boil these thick stems in salt water, add butter or sauce and eat them like asparagus. I boiled a few pieces, but no one from the family, except me, dared to even try them. A woman from the village, from whom we bought milk, pulled out these plants and took away a whole wheelbarrow for her cow, saying: “This is all the same to my cow as a cake.”

The garden for Ilya Grigorievich meant a lot and occupied quite a lot. large area. Water was supplied there, watering was carried out with hoses, there were barrels for liquid manure, there were greenhouses where seedlings were grown. But the main seedlings were brought by an agronomist, with whom Ilya Grigorievich kept in constant touch. There were a lot of varieties of radishes in the garden, they ripened early. Even before dinner, Ehrenburg asks me: “Do you like radishes?” - "Highly". And when they sat down at the table, he forced everyone to eat it with the words: “You love her, why do you eat so little?”

Various varieties of lettuce, zucchini and squash were grown. At the same time, the zucchini were not ordinary, but some kind of special, complicated pear-shaped, young, but huge, with a dark green peel, the taste is much more delicate than usual. Many varieties of different beans were planted, with pods thin and long, small and large. She ran at different times. It was boiled young, in pods, as a side dish for meat dishes. Many varieties of cabbage were also grown in this garden: ordinary, and cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, and some other kind, from which inflorescences are eaten, and red. The kitchen garden was located below the dacha and the flower garden, and a serpentine path led up the slope to it.

The flower garden was located at the level of the dacha and occupied a decent area near the open terrace. Since Ilya Grigorievich brought seeds and cuttings from abroad, one could see various outlandish flowers there. In early spring, crocuses and some flowers of incredibly bright and varied colors appeared. It looked like colorful Easter eggs were scattered all over the place. The whole flower garden was bordered by primroses, not at all like ours. They were large and very different both in the shape of the petals and in color. Daffodils were planted in a whole bed along the flower garden near the fence. A lot of all kinds of roses - almost orange, a lot of bluebells and lilies were especially striking.

One day Ehrenburg brought royal lily bulbs from England. I waited a long time for it to bloom, and finally a single flower appeared, completely golden. Ilya Grigorievich showed it to everyone. In 1964, he brought bindweed seeds from somewhere in Europe and planted them in a box in such a way that the plant would wrap itself around the front column that decorated the terrace. And now the plant really wrapped itself around the column, rising higher and higher, to the very roof; the greenery was thick, but there were no flowers on it. So it was in the first year after planting the seeds, and in the second, and in the third, and only after the death of Ilya Grigorievich, when Lyubov Mikhailovna lived alone in the country, this bindweed suddenly blossomed. I came to her once and stopped amazed. The whole plant, twisted around the column, was covered with huge, saucer-sized, blue flowers. Just think, Ilya Grigorievich was so looking forward to this flowering, and with him the plant did not bloom, and now, when it is gone, such a miracle ...

Bred Ilya Grigorievich and indoor flowers. The large terrace has been turned into a winter garden. Flowers in large tubs on the floor, in pots and boxes on the windowsills. A mass of climbing plants that covered the terrace walls and ceiling. The greenhouse was adjacent to the house. Everything there was filled with flowers, a lot of earth in boxes on a special table. Here Ehrenburg conjured in winter and summer, he sowed and planted something, transplanted something. If a beautiful flower appeared in a pot, Ilya Grigorievich brought it into the room or onto the terrace, and the faded flower returned it back to the greenhouse.

Twice during my acquaintance with Ehrenburg I succeeded in surprising and delighting him. For the first time of the year, in 1963 or 1964, my friend, who went on a business trip somewhere to the North, brought and gave me a large bouquet of wild rosemary. These branches, which seemed completely lifeless, had to be put into the water. In a few days they were covered with purple flowers, and green leaves should have appeared later. Since the bouquet was very beautiful and unfamiliar to Moscow, I decided to present it to Ehrenburg, a great lover of flowers.

Having wrapped the bouquet in paper and cellophane, I arrived at 8 Gorky Street. Lyubov Mikhailovna and I put it in the water and called Ehrenburg. It turned out that neither he nor Lyubov Mikhailovna had ever seen rosemary. The bouquet stood at the Ehrenburgs for a long time, covered with green leaves and was unusually beautiful. Ehrenburg liked this gift of mine very much.

The second time, already in 1967, when we lived in the country, I managed to buy luxurious tomatoes, huge and pear-shaped, at the Moscow Central Market. The seller of these tomatoes, seeing my interest, said that this variety is called "Bull's Heart" and he brought it out himself. He asked for them twice as much as for ordinary tomatoes, but I bought as many as three kilograms and brought them to the dacha to Ehrenburg. The dacha watchman and I washed them in the kitchen, dried them, put them on a dish, and I took this dish to the terrace. Ehrenburg had guests whom I had previously met in his house - Kaverin with his wife, Boris Slutsky and Margarita Aliger. Seeing the tomatoes, Ehrenburg asked what they were. And again, I guessed it, he had never seen tomatoes of this variety before, he was surprised at their size and shape. Everyone took a tomato and found them very tasty. It was a very difficult task to present something to Ehrenburg, and I was glad that I succeeded twice.

When in June 1967 a full spread about Babel appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde, Ehrenburg called me and spent more than an hour translating the contents of the publications. There was also his article under the heading “Revolutionary but humanist”, which I really liked. This article ended like this: “Isaac Babel died prematurely, but managed to do a lot for young Soviet literature. As a revolutionary, he remained a humanist, and that was not easy."

A spread about Babel in the newspaper Le Monde contained a number of other publications. Pierre Dommergue has written about the influence of Babel's work on American writers. According to him, American writers, who formerly raised the cult of Flaubert and Maupassant, their teachers of style, for ten years now have turned their faces to Celine, Artaud, and mainly to Babel. The author names such American writers as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer and Bernard Malamud, whose characters are surprisingly reminiscent of Lyutov from Cavalry: the same impossibility to adapt to violence and, like protection from the inevitable, the same irony. "Tenderness, cruelty, lyricism, expressed at the same time with restraint and with a sense of humor - these are the points of contact between American literature and Babel's work," wrote Pierre Dommergue.

Another author of an article on Babel, Petr Ravich, writes: “Trying to decompose a diamond into its primary elements is an absurd attempt, the most that can be done is to explore its spectrum. It is the same with the enormous talent of Isaac Babel.” The author calls Odessa the Black Sea Marseille. And he writes further: “Having killed at the age of 47 the largest Jewish Jew among Russian writers, a man who, perhaps since Gogol, knew how to make his readers laugh like no one else, destroying an intellectual prone to deep reflection, but who adored horses and Cossack strength, the authorities of his country have committed an irreparable crime against Russian literature.”

I was very grateful to Ehrenburg for the detailed translation of all the articles devoted to Babel, and I wrote something down.

One day at dinner, Ehrenburg said: “Imagine, Boris Polevoy assured the foreigners who visited me today that Babel is published in our country in millions of copies.” Lyubov Mikhailovna was indignant: “When will they finally stop lying?” And Ehrenburg replies: "They are just beginning."

Somehow they started talking about what ignorant people work in the Literary Fund. I said that I came to get a ticket to the House of Creativity, and they ask me: “Will he go himself?” Irina Ilyinichna says: “I came to receive vouchers for myself and for Irishka (the granddaughter of the poet Shchipachev), and an employee of the Literary Fund asks how to write correctly: Shchapochev or Shchepachev.” Ehrenburg immediately responded: “I would say - Shchupacheva!”

The summer of 1967 was the only one for me, but, unfortunately, the last, when I was in constant contact with Ehrenburg.

At the end of the summer, Ilya Grigorievich fell in the country on a serpentine path leading to the garden. They lifted him up and moved the office. Doctor Konevsky diagnosed a heart attack. Lyubov Mikhailovna complained to me that Ehrenburg, as soon as he regained consciousness, began to demand newspapers, raised his hands and himself lit a fluorescent lamp over the head of the bed. Within twenty days the cardiogram improved, but Konevsky considered it necessary to transport the patient to Moscow. The phone at the dacha worked intermittently, and it could happen that communication with Moscow could be interrupted at the most dangerous moment for Ehrenburg's health. A council of several doctors was convened, and they came to the conclusion that it was possible to transport Ehrenburg.

They took him in an ambulance. For some reason, Lyubov Mikhailovna was not allowed to get into this car, and she followed in a passenger car. In the ambulance, Ehrenburg was tied to a stretcher so that he would not make unnecessary movements. He was uncomfortable, and he asked the attendants to untie him, but they refused. All the way they talked about the methods of pickling cucumbers, not paying the slightest attention to the patient. As he himself later told his wife, he was very worried, and when they finally brought him and laid him down in an office in a Moscow apartment, he calmed down and felt better. This went on for several days, and everyone thought that Ilya Grigorievich was recovering. He had a nurse on duty at all times. One evening, when the whole family was gathered around him, the housekeeper called everyone into the next room for supper. Everyone left, only the nurse remained, who, before leaving, decided to check his pulse again, began to count - one, two, three ... twelve ... the thirteenth blow did not follow. Ehrenburg is dead. And yesterday he said to his daughter Irina: “It seems that I got out.” Everyone was shocked, so unexpected was his death.

The coffin with the body of Ehrenburg was placed on the stage of the Great Hall of the House of Writers. Relatives and close friends were sitting on a simple bench near the coffin. The hall was filled with people who had come to say goodbye, and people who stood in line on the street were moving past the stage along the aisle. Many threw flowers on the stage, some shouted words addressed to Ehrenburg as a defender against anti-Semitism and a man who played such a big role in the victory over fascism. Many foreign friends arrived, speeches were made from the stage. The guard of honor changed.

The artist Nathan Altman, who was sitting next to me on the stage, was trying to capture Ehrenburg's face. He made several attempts, tearing off sheet after sheet from the notebook, but he crumpled them all up and hid them in his bag. So he did not manage to make a single sketch.

When the coffin was taken out of the hall, the whole street was crowded with people. I went out the door and was immediately squeezed by the crowd, it was impossible to get to the car. Fortunately, Boris Slutsky, who was already sitting in the car, saw me, he jumped out of the car, pushed his way towards me and dragged me inside. Otherwise, I would not have ended up at the Novodevichy Cemetery. The car with Ehrenburg's coffin was somewhere ahead. Speeches were again made at the cemetery, the coffin was lowered into the grave. I stood next to Lyubov Mikhailovna, who said: “And I was able to survive it!” The fact is that she already had two heart attacks, and we were all afraid that Ilya Grigorievich would have to survive her death. It turned out the opposite.

I have never seen such funerals, truly folk ones. Both in the cemetery and around it there were countless crowds of people. Muscovites showed their attitude towards the writer Ehrenburg, their love and appreciation for everything he did in his life.

This text is an introductory piece.

Ilya Ehrenburg Foreword In the 19th century, the rhythm of life was unhurried: people rode on chaise longues and wrote with scratchy pens; maybe that's why they formed early - they had time to think. Lermontov was twenty-seven years old when he died, Petofi and Kitts -

Ilya Ehrenburg BABEL WAS A POET… The summer in Moscow was hot; many of my friends lived in dachas or were away. I wandered around the hot city. One of the very stuffy, pre-stormy days brought me unexpected joy: I met a man who became my

Ilya Ehrenburg. Osip Mandelstam "Mandelstam" - how solemnly the organ sounds in the majestic naves of the cathedral. "Mandelstam? Oh, don't make me laugh, ”and funny stories run in streams. Not the hero of Rabelais, not the modern student, not Francois Villon, not the anecdote in the carriage.

ILYA ERENBURG The memoirs of Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg about Voloshin were included in the first book of his autobiographical prose "People, Years, Life". Text - according to the book: Ehrenburg I. Sobr. op. in 9 volumes. T. 8 (M., 1966).

V. Ognev Ilya Erenburg and O. Savich I once thought they were brothers. First, they seemed to me similar. Secondly, someone once told me that they were brothers. Then I myself explained to others that this was not so, and they told me: “Tell me, please, but I thought ...” Then I met and

Writer Ilya Ehrenburg Let's see which of the writers and artists accepted Khrushchev's "thaw", who did not accept it ... One of the first writers who became a "man of the thaw" was, of course, the author of the new meaning of the beautiful old Russian word - Ilya

Ilya Ehrenburg Paris in the first winter of the war. You are climbing a high, narrow, straight, landing-free staircase-corridor, on the upper step of which a lamp smokes. The large workshop is overflowing with people. In the corners there are sagging sommiers, dusty warehouses of subframes, several three-legged

Ilya Ehrenburg An excerpt from Voloshin's article "Ilya Ehrenburg - a poet" is published according to the publication of this article in the newspaper "Rech" (1916. - No. 300. - October 31 - p. 2). In the first war winter, Voloshin came to Paris from Dornach on 16 (3) January 1915. In January, a personal acquaintance with I.G.

Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg The Committee on the literary heritage of Babel included: K. A. Fedin, L. M. Leonov, I. G. Ehrenburg, L. I. Slavin, G. N. Moonblit, S. G. Gekht and Ya.S. the very first days after the creation of this Commission, it became clear that neither Fedin nor Leonov participated in the work.

Ilya Erenburg Writer-fighter We suffered a great loss: a great writer and a wonderful person Yevgeny Petrov died. He brought into Soviet literature the fantasy of the south and deeply human, soul-illuminating humor, which makes him related to the traditions of Russian classics. He knew how

Ilya Erenburg I.G. Ehrenburg In 1944, in the fall, when I was serving in the army in Moscow, one of my friends took me to Ilya Ehrenburg's author's matinee in the Column Hall of the House of the Unions. During the war years, Ehrenburg, thanks to his articles, was especially popular in

Ilya Erenburg Monologues to myself Now, after more than 50 years, after meeting with Ehrenburg, I will try to remember what pushed me to him. Most likely a sense of hopelessness. Returning from Stalingrad to Moscow, I went around with my first play "Mephistopheles" and

ILYA ERENBURG FROM THE BOOK I met I. A. Ilf and E. P. Petrov in Moscow in 1932, but became friends with them a year later, when they arrived in Paris. In those days the foreign trips of our writers abounded in unforeseen adventures. To Italy Ilf and Petrov

Ilya Erenburg Introductory speech by K. Paustovsky at the Literary Museum at the evening dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the birth of I. G. Ehrenburg, in February 1956. In many books, essays and articles by Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg, individual precisely expressed